


The Hatchlings

by TheGoldenGhost



Category: Vingt mille lieues sous les mers | Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea - Jules Verne
Genre: Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Helping Baby Animals, Ocean, Seafaring Camraderie, Turtles, and uh... well some infodumping about Leatherback sea turtles, that's why I wrote the fic after all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:46:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25856107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGoldenGhost/pseuds/TheGoldenGhost
Summary: Captain Nemo and his crew decide to go ashore to witness the yearly hatching of a beach full of Leatherback sea turtle nests.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 12





	The Hatchlings

**Author's Note:**

> Hello all! 
> 
> So I've been teasing this fic for about a month and here it is, I hope it's worth the wait! It's very... soft, this one. I noticed that a lot of my TKLUTS fics are pretty dark so for a change I thought what the heck, why not write something that's purely gentle and good?
> 
> I like to think this is Nemo at his best; no anger, no moral incongruence, just a genuine desire to admire the sea and its beauty, and to help it along where he has the power to do so.
> 
> Also, I love sea turtles. So you can't go wrong there. <3

The night was warm and full of promises. Up ahead, the expansive beach on the coast of Venezuela stretched wide and pale in the faint moonlight. It was summer, and life was coming to the sea.

Nemo was on the platform, looking out at the beach to see any sign of humanity. He was lucky; there was none. This was a relatively unknown location, not traversed much by people, but frequented every year by the very creatures he wanted to spot.

Leatherback sea turtles. Nemo and his crew had watched the turtles go ashore a few months before to dig their nests and lay their eggs. Now it was time, if Nemo’s calculations were accurate, for the hatchlings to be out and returning to the sea.

“It takes them a few days to dig their way out of the sand,” he explained to René and Pyotr. They were the two youngest crew members, both barely out of their teens, and tended to look to Nemo at times as a sort of unofficial schoolmaster. “And then they crawl their way towards the sea in a hurry. They’re not safe, you see, until they reach it. And even then, there are hidden dangers. Many large predatory fish and sea animals would love to have one for a snack.”

“That’s why we’re going ashore?” Pyotr asked. “To make sure they make it safely to sea.”

“Exactly. And we’ll station some of our men below the water to keep a lookout for oceanic predators as well. We can follow them in the _Nautilus_ from a distance and if we see anything that seems ready to eat them, we can get rid of it.”

Elijah signaled to them from the pilothouse and Nemo signed in return. “We’re going below. We’ll cut the lights and get into our suits when we’re on the seafloor, and from there it will be a fairly short walk to the mainland.”

When the hatches were closed, Nemo felt the gentle change in pressure as the submarine began her descent. Having the lights off would be important. Sea turtles navigated their way to the all-important shoreline by instinctively moving towards the subtle glow of the horizon. Bright lights could disorient them and make them lose their way. Though Nemo would never require his crew to remain submerged in total darkness, they could not leave on the outside lights and would have to make do with only a few interior ones.

He gave orders to Ishaan, the chief officer, who would be staying behind with a small group of others to attend to the ship. “When we depart, extinguish every light except those absolutely needed to see by. If any part of the ship is unused, keep the lights in that area off. We’ll be staying out for several hours. If dawn comes with no signal from us, send out someone to check the beach.”

With that, Nemo and his men got into their diving suits and headed out into the water. It was pitch black, but Nemo had allowed one light for every three men, as it would not be safe to travel in total darkness the two kilometers it would take to get to shore.

They reached the beach in under an hour, extinguishing their devices and ascending to the shoreline. There were no signs of hatchlings yet, and the nests were all hidden in the sand, but Nemo and the others knew that they were there.

And so they were. After a long stretch patrolling the beach with eyes wide open for any sign of life, Leopold gave the alert. The men rushed to see.

Gathered around a small patch of sand, they could all see that the ground was loose and shifting under the weight of some small struggling creature. “Don’t touch it when it emerges,” Nemo warned them all. “They imprint on the sand where they’re born. Picking them up will cause them to lose touch with their home beach, and they’ll never find their way back to breed later on.”

The sand continued to shift and slide until, out from under, came a tiny dark head and a little body behind it. It looked like its parents; a rounded shell, four flippers and a long tail, with large black eyes. But unlike its parents, which could grow to be seven feet long, it was unimaginably small. If Nemo could have picked it up, it would have fit in his palm.

There were more emerging, faster now – hundreds per nest, Nemo knew, and along this beach there may be hundreds of nests. Which would mean, in essence, potentially thousands of babies if all went well.

“Gentlemen,” Nemo said to his crew. “They’ve done it.”

The next few hours passed like minutes. Every moment a new hatchling emerged, and every moment the crew watched the skies and the shore, guns at the ready should a large fish or hungry seabird decide to try a sample. The beach was filled with shouts as another nest was found, quiet chatter as the crew strolled along discussing their days, and laughter as they watched the little turtles make their way inch by inch into their watery home.

Occasionally a bird would come too close and a gun would go off – not to kill, but to startle. The baby turtles, intent on their mission, paid no mind.

At long last, the hatchlings started to disperse and fewer and fewer appeared from out of the sand. At this, Nemo and the crew began to go to the holes and check the eggshells, counting them up and bringing some back for study. Occasionally they would find a few unhatched eggs, or, on sadder occasions, a hatchling that had made it partway out and gotten stuck, not surviving the process. Twice they actually found one stuck and still alive, wriggling to get out. Those times, Nemo allowed the turtle to be gently removed and placed on the sand to go free. Perhaps it would not imprint, but at least it had a chance it would not have had if it remained stuck in its shell.

Once all this was done, Nemo and his crew stood on the shore and watched the remaining few turtles vanish under the waves. Then they replaced their helmets and began their descent into the sea.

It was still black as pitch down there, and the lantern light did not spread far, but as Nemo made his way back to the ship, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

Suresh. He was holding a lantern, which he stretched towards the surface ten feet above, pointing.

Above the crew swam the thousands of babies that they had just seen born and helped along where they could. They all realized at perhaps the same time that they were the first men on Earth and in history to be fortunate enough to see a beachful of baby sea turtles swimming out to their new home.

Nemo looked up through the brine at the newborns straggling their way out further into the water. Here they’d eat, thrive, grow strong and return to breed. Nemo’s heart ached for them, abandoned to the open sea. True that they would be provided for – the ocean was generous and wide. But she was also without affection or mercy, and these babies were alone.

Nemo knew it was the way of the natural world. Sea turtles didn’t need any guidance or parental affection, and they were born in clutches of hundreds so that many could be spared to the elements without great loss.

But even so, the thought of so many of them being killed, or eaten, or drowning, or dying or hunger pulled at his heart. He wished they could all live, sentimental old man that he was. He watched them swim, full of hope and good wishes and despair and sorrow.

Eventually, though, he knew it was time to let go and move on. They’d done what they could, and they had witnessed a miracle in the process. So he signaled, and the crew moved forth, through the flurry of turtles swimming above. Every so often one would dip down further, close enough to touch.

In this magical place, they walked, pleasantly aware of each other’s company and not needing to speak a word. Nemo felt a rush of affection for each one of his crew, his family.

They reached the _Nautilus_ without incident. As it was nearly dawn and everyone was tired, short goodnights were exchanged and beds were sought soon after. But the next morning, Nemo awoke to find the sun streaming in and the room filled with light.

Ah, he thought. Always another day. And it was a comforting thing; that the night before he had witnessed something sublime and unusual, and that the very next morning things could be back to the quiet mundane of their usual existence.

He met René and Pyotr on the deck where he’d met them before. “What did you think, gentlemen?” he asked.

“Can we do that every year?” Pyotr asked.

“I don’t see why not, unless this beach is discovered by other humans. Yes; I would like to come back the next year and do the same. It was marvelous, wasn’t it?”

“Very,” René agreed. “Captain… how long will it be before our turtles lay eggs of their own?”

Nemo smiled. “I hope you’re ready to wait a good long time. Leatherbacks can take fifteen or twenty years to become mature.”

“Fifteen or _twenty_?” They both gasped. “But that means we won’t see our turtles again until…”

“Until you’re my age, hmm? Ancient!” Nemo laughed. “But don’t worry. Leatherbacks actually grow up quicker than many species. Green sea turtles can take _fifty_ years before they’re ready to mate!”

They both stared in shock.

“And so if _that’s_ what we’d been helping to hatch, well, I guess I wouldn’t be around to see their children. As it is, we’ve got some time to relax and wait for the next generation.”

And wait they would, but the next year there would be more, siblings to this year’s clutch. Looking down into the water, the three men spotted a tiny spot bobbing on the surface – one of the hatchlings, coming up for air, and perhaps trying to get a glimpse of the mysterious figures that had watched over its birth the day before.

“Good luck, little one,” Nemo said as it vanished below the surface again. “It may be twenty years before we meet again, but we will be there. And what a reunion it will be!”


End file.
